5. I have left myself but little time to speak of the origin and early history of this people--topics which are of deep interest in themselves, but which are involved in great obscurity. They are subjects which commend themselves to your attention, and offer a wide field for your future research. There are three periods in our Indian history: 1. THE ALLEGORIC AND FABULOUS AGE. This includes the creation, the deluge, the creation of Holiness and Evil, and some analogous points, in the general and shadowy traditions of men, which our hunter race, have almost universally concealed under the allegoric figures, of a creative bird or beast, or the exploits of some potent personage, endowed with supernatural courage or power. In this era, the earth was also covered with monsters and giants, who waged war, and drove men into caves and recesses; until the interposition of the original creative power, for their relief. 2. THE ANTE-HISTORICAL PERIOD, in which tradition begins to assume the character of truth, but is still obscured by fable. This period includes the early discoveries by the Northmen, the reputed voyage of Prince Madoc, &c. 3. THE PERIOD OF ACTUAL HISTORY, dating from the earliest voyage of Columbus and his companions. I have alluded, in a preceding part of this address, to the mode of studying their early history. Where little or nothing is to be obtained from books, it requires a cautious investigation of these traditions and antiquities. Ethnology, in all its branches, has a direct and practical bearing on this subject. The physical type of man, the means of his subsistence, the state of his arts, the language he speaks, the hieroglyphics he carves, the mounds he builds--the fortifications he erects,--his religion, his superstitions, his legendary lore--the very geography of the country he inhabits, are so many direct and palpable means of acquiring historical evidence. It is from the investigation of these, that tribes and nations are grouped and classified, and the original stocks of mankind denoted, and the track of their dispersion over the globe traced. And they constitute so many topics of study and investigation.